Theaimofthispaperistoexploretherecentboomofneo Victoriannarrativesintoday'sliteraryandmasscultureproductionand toanalysethenatureofthesefictionalreturnstothenineteenthcentury. Thepapercommentsontheglobalnatureofthetrend,whichseemsto transcendtheBritishcontextandresonatewithinthewiderpostmodern culturalframework.TheapproachestakenbyneoVictoriantextshave been very diverse, as have critical reactions to them, ranging from revisionary narratives seeking to unearth marginal voices previously absent from the Victorian text to playful reinventions of wellknown figuresortropeshighlightingtheirownartificiality.Whatmostofthem shareisthedesiretorevisitandreassessthepredominantnotionsof theVictorianheldtodayandtoinvestigatethepotentialinvestmentof contemporaryculturaldiscourseinthecontinuationordiscontinuation ofsuchrepresentations.
Will Self's Dorian: An Imitation recasts the decadence and wit of Oscar Wilde's narrative as the full-blown excess of image-obsessed contemporary Britain riddled with drugs, AIDS, and terminal boredom. Brutal satire and imagery of death, war, disease, and destruction align the novel with the contemporary genre of transgressive fiction which has established a new satiric tradition. The aim of this article is to analyse Self's novel within that tradition by examining the antihero as the epitome of his age and the city as the transgressive locus terribilis.
The aim of this paper is to explore the dynamics of looking and being looked at in Sarah Waters’s Tipping the Velvet. The analysis is theoretically framed by feminist film theory and the concept of the male gaze. According to Laura Mulvey, classic narrative cinema reflects social views on sexual difference and reaffirms the active male/passive female binary. The novel raises the issue of what happens with the gaze when the protagonists are non- heteronormative, a question further made complex by the theme of cross-dressing, which destabilizes visual gender coding and makes it unreliable. The female narrator is infatuated with a male impersonator only to become one herself, and the visual interaction that spurs their sexual relationship on does not fit neatly into Mulvey’s analysis, as both the bearer of the gaze and its object are female, a woman coded as masculine. The male gaze is further deconstructed as the main female character becomes a prostitute, passing for male and working with male clients. Finally, the novel questions the controlling aspect of the gaze implicit in Mulvey’s essay, as the gaze is reimagined as a potential source of power to be desired and invited.
Itwouldbenomistaketostatethatamongthecommonest routes contemporary literature in English takes is one of asserting history'sandreality'sfictionalityanddissolvingtheboundarybetween real and imaginary. The route is certainly common enough in the work of the controversial British author Jeanette Winterson, whose proseisaneverendinginterplaybetweenfactandfiction,realityand fantasy. Winterson'scriticallyneglectedArt&Lies(1995)epitomises the disintegration ofclearcutlinesbetween(auto)biography, history andfictionthroughasetofbinarieslikeart/life,art/lie,orfact/fiction, transformingourideasoftruthandlie.SimilarconcernsinformThe Passion (1987), which is more universally praised. The parallels between the two works suggest a continuum in Winterson's literary explorations of the nature of truth and reality, the status of fiction andhistoricalrecord,andtheusefulnessofbinariesandlabels.This paper aims at exploring how these polyphonic prose pieces rebel againstsinglepointsofview,redefinethenotionsofhistoryasfactand storytellingasfabrication,andexhibitapreferenceforthetruthofthe imaginationandunofcialperspectives.
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